SOURCE : https://www.brltheory.

com/resources/negative-harmony-chord-chart/

DECEMBER 17, 2018BY BROOKLYN

NEGATIVE HARMONY CHORD CHART

A chart of the common chords of tonal harmony and their negative harmony mirrors. This isn’t meant to provide an
introduction to negative harmony (there are already great resources on that), but instead to provide a reference chart
for composers trying to incorporate negative harmonic concepts into their music. It’s also meant to serve as a prequel
for upcoming posts on negative mirrors of common chord progressions, turnarounds, and jazz forms.

It’s possible to mirror chords across a number of axes, but for this and upcoming posts I’m specifically looking at the
b3/3 axis. This is the axis Jacob Collier talks about as “converting perfect to plagal” and maintaining equivalent “tonal
gravity” between the original and mirror chords.

My specific process for deriving these mirrors was to flip each note of the original chord across the b3/3 axis, then
select the root note by reflecting the original root across the tonic (1) axis. Part 3 of Jazzmodes’ negative harmony
series has some more explanation on why it makes sense to select the root this way. In short, it’s because this will
cause the mirror roots to always move proportionately to and opposite of the original roots on the circle of fifths
(descending fifths become ascending fifths, etc).

Note that in chords without a perfect fifth above the root, that method actually gives a root note that isn’t in the
chord. In those cases the mirror root is undefined/ambiguous, so I just picked a voicing that made sense for the given
mirror pitch class set.
ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

1 I i-

1 Imaj7 i-b6

1 I7 i-6

1 I+ V+ **

1 i- I

1 i-7 I6

b2 bII vii-

b2 bIImaj7 vii-b6

b2 bII7 vii-6

b2 bii- VII

b2 bii-7 VII6

2 II bvii-

2 II7 bvii-6

2 ii- bVII
ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

2 ii-7 bVII6

2 ii° vii° **

2 ii-7b5 V7 **

b3 bIII vi-

b3 bIIImaj7 vi-b6

b3 bIII7 vi-6

3 III bvi-

3 III7 bvi-6

3 iii- bVI

3 iii-7 bVI6

4 IV v-

4 IVmaj7 v-b6

4 iv- V

4 iv-6 V7
ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

#4/b5 #IV bv-

#4/b5 #ivø7 bIII7 **

5 V iv-

5 V7 iv-6

5 v- IV

5 v-7 IV6

b6 bVI iii-

b6 bVImaj7 iii-b6

b6 bVI7 iii-6

b6 bvi- III

6 VI biii-

6 VI7 biii-6

6 vi- bIII

6 vi-7 bIII6
ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

b7 bVII ii-

b7 bVIImaj7 ii-b6

b7 bVII7 ii-6

7 VII bii-

7 VII7 bii-6

7 vii° ii° **

7 viiø7 bVII7 **

7 vii°7 vii°7 **

** ambiguous mirror root

ALTERNATE METHOD FOR DEFINING MIRROR CHORDS

Another possible way you could define a chord mirror is by reflecting the entire chord-scale across the b3/3 axis and
then constructing a chord using that chord-scale built on the mirror root. The mirror triads would be identical, but
the extensions would change. For example, Imaj7 would reflect to i-7 instead of i-b6.
This might be more palatable because it uses familiar triadic harmony, but it would also change the harmonic gravity
between the original chord and its mirror. For example, V7 and its mirror, iv-6, have the same harmonic gravity in
their leading tones (7->1 reflects to b6->5 and 4->3 reflects to 2->b3). If you instead used iv-7, the voice leading
would change and no longer perfectly mirror the original.

HOW TO MIRROR A CHORD-SCALE

A chord-scale can be mirrored the same as a regular chord. Select the mirror root by reflecting the original root across
the tonic axis. Then find the rest of the notes by reflecting the entire pitch-class set across the b3/3 axis.

We can make use of a shortcut here using the above table because a given quality of chord-scale will always reflect
into the related quality of mirrored chord-scale. This relationship is described in the table below:

ORIGINAL CHORD-SCALE MIRROR CHORD-SCALE

Lydian Phrygian

Ionian Aeolian

Mixolydian Dorian

Dorian Mixolydian

Aeolian Ionian

Phyrgian Lydian
Using that, any chord-scale can be mirrored by reflecting the root across the tonic axis and using the mirror quality
relationship from the table. For example, a bIIImaj7 (lydian chord-scale rooted on b3) would reflect into a vi-7
(phrygian chord-scale rooted on 6) because b3 reflects across the tonic to 6 and lydian reflects to phrygian.

As with chords, this depends on the chord-scale having a perfect fifth above the root. If there isn’t a perfect fifth above
root, the resulting mirror root is ambiguous and there are multiple ways to interpret the mirrored pitch-class set.

I’m not going to write a whole chart of these because they’re fairly easy to derive from the main chord chart. Also, not
all of the chords listed have a single unambiguous chord-scale; some of them are dependent on the context in which a
chord is being used and/or stylistic considerations and that goes beyond the scope of this post. Here are just a few to
get started with:

CHORD CHORD-SCALE MIRROR CHORD-SCALE MIRROR ROOT AND POSSIBLE CHORD

Imaj7 Ionian Aeolian i-11

ii-7 Dorian Mixolydian bVII9

IVmaj7 Lydian Phyrgian v-7susb9

V7 Mixolydian Dorian iv-9

vii°7 Whole-half diminished Half-whole diminished vii°7

References and further reading:

June Lee “Interview: Jacob Collier (Part 2)”

Jazzmodes “Negative harmony’s mirror world”

Rick Beato “Musical Palindromes & Negative Harmony (what?)” (Note: he derives mirrors by reflecting everything across
the tonic axis, which is why we end up with different modal pairs.)